A successful marriage is the cornerstone of a healthy traditional family

Published: Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 08:00 AM.

By MIKE ZIX

PANAMA CITY BEACH If you’re married and have kids you have me at a disadvantage concerning some of the things I’ll be bringing up. I’ve never been married, nor do I have any kids. However, I was raised in a traditional family, complete with a brother, a sister, a mother and a father. I am now in my 50s.

But a person doesn’t need to have his own offspring or a marriage to be able to see that the traditional family in America has been waning.

The evidence of the decline of the traditional family is all around us. Spouse abuse, child abuse, the high divorce rate, the rising number of babies born to single females and the large number of single-parent households all paint a picture of a wounded institution.

The traditional family is indispensable. It is, by design, the best situation in which to raise children. Therein, a child will experience both a mother and a father as role models. And having a sibling gives a child an opportunity to experience a peer relationship with parental supervision. There will be conflicts within a traditional family, but a good family life will provide experiences for a child that foster affection and respect for others, a good work ethic and a sense of self-worth.

Unfortunately, many children today don’t experience the benefits of being raised in a traditional family. Through varied circumstances, many more children today are being raised in single-parent households than was the case when I was a child.

Many of today’s single-parent households came about through divorce. I’m not going to point a boney finger of condemnation at everyone who has been divorced. I know people have their reasons for getting divorced. And obviously, things like spouse abuse and child abuse are perfectly legitimate reasons to get divorced. Also, having a spouse who is unfaithful can be grounds for divorce. But the high divorce rate indicates that many Americans haven’t taken marriage seriously enough.

PANAMA CITY BEACH
If you’re married and have kids you have me at a disadvantage concerning some of the things I’ll be bringing up. I’ve never been married, nor do I have any kids. However, I was raised in a traditional family, complete with a brother, a sister, a mother and a father. I am now in my 50s.

But a person doesn’t need to have his own offspring or a marriage to be able to see that the traditional family in America has been waning.

The evidence of the decline of the traditional family is all around us. Spouse abuse, child abuse, the high divorce rate, the rising number of babies born to single females and the large number of single-parent households all paint a picture of a wounded institution.

The traditional family is indispensable. It is, by design, the best situation in which to raise children. Therein, a child will experience both a mother and a father as role models. And having a sibling gives a child an opportunity to experience a peer relationship with parental supervision. There will be conflicts within a traditional family, but a good family life will provide experiences for a child that foster affection and respect for others, a good work ethic and a sense of self-worth.

Unfortunately, many children today don’t experience the benefits of being raised in a traditional family. Through varied circumstances, many more children today are being raised in single-parent households than was the case when I was a child.

Many of today’s single-parent households came about through divorce. I’m not going to point a boney finger of condemnation at everyone who has been divorced. I know people have their reasons for getting divorced. And obviously, things like spouse abuse and child abuse are perfectly legitimate reasons to get divorced. Also, having a spouse who is unfaithful can be grounds for divorce. But the high divorce rate indicates that many Americans haven’t taken marriage seriously enough.

Any of a number of problems can drive a couple to contemplate divorce. But when a marriage produces children, a couple needs to put an effort into saving their marriage, because getting divorced will have an effect on their kids — likely a negative one. And in some cases that negative effect can be quite huge.

Of course, divorce isn’t the only way a child can end up in a one-parent household. One parent might die prematurely. And there is a third way many single-parent households come to be: well over a million babies are born annually to single females in the U.S. (typically the result of ill-advised relationships with irresponsible males).

Thus, single parents are a mixed group.

My main reason for bringing up the issue of single parenting is simply to stress that the best efforts of a single parent typically can’t match the best efforts of a mother/father couple. Thus there is a need to discourage teen sex and sex without commitment among adults, and a need to restore and promote traditional till-death-do-we-part marriage.

I’m not calling for government intervention in these matters. (Indeed, one could reasonably argue that government involvement in marriage has probably weakened it as an institution.) I’m calling on teens and adults to refrain from conceiving outside of marriage. I’m calling on married couples to employ compromise and forgiveness. I’m calling on couples to work out the problems they have along the way, rather than walk out on each other. I’m calling for a return to the principle of marital commitment.

Obviously, marriage can be quite challenging and even difficult sometimes. But it is still the way that most people choose to go through life, and for good reason: one-man/one-woman mating was built into human nature by our Creator.

In forming a relationship, a man and a woman bring the psychological and emotional traits of their respective genders into the relationship, completing each other as such. Human sexuality (which involves much more than just physical acts) was designed not only for reproduction, but also to foster marital closeness. A couple’s sexual intimacy works to strengthen and maintain an emotional bond between the two. That bond, in the context of a mutual love, is a key trait of a successful marriage.

A successful marriage is the cornerstone of a good, cohesive traditional family.

(For more information about human sexuality and relationships, and another perspective on related matters, I recommend an article called “Good Sex, Bad Sex” by Jennifer Roback Morse, which can be found here.)